Red Door Magazine 21

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Noah cicero is an American author who grew up in a small town
near Youngstown, Ohio. He has lived in Eugene, Oregon, the Grand Canyon, Arizona, and
Seoul, South Korea. Cicero currently resides in Las vegas, Nevada. He has a movie made
of his first book called The Human War, which won the 2014 Beloit Film Festival Award
for Best Screenplay. He has books translated into Turkish, Kurdish and Spanish. His first
book of poetry, Bipolar Cowboy, was voted one of the best books in Goodreads 2015.
Learn more about Noah Cicero at neutralspaces.co/noahcicero
There is something very reassuring in Noah’s writing. I’m not just saying that he really
knows what he is doing, I am underscoring the fact that when you read his books you don’t just
get but relate to what he is talking about. I do not know that he’s prophet nor prince (aren’t we
all?) but I can confirm that he’s a poet, and I committed the sacrilege of bending the pages of
the book for the phrases that I liked until the top of the book became twice as fat because of so
many folded pages. Just so you know that I am not simply praising, I for some random reason
also folded the bottom side of the pages whenever I found a spelling mistake, and there was a
few of those, too. But that’s irrelevant. Let me show you. I will do this oracle style, opening any of
the folded pages. Listen to this:
“It might be possible that there is only one good planet in the whole system, I had been to the
top of Colorado Rockies, I saw that no food grew there. With a deviation of 12,000 feet nothing
grows. We had so much luck, the planet is magnetic and reflects solar flares, we have water and
land, the planet isn’t covered with ice, all of it isn’t desert. But we are the planet, humans aren’t
separate from the planet, they are the planet, just like the water that floods and destroys the land,
humans are the same as drought that kills animals, humans are the same as lightning that burns
down a forest, humans are the same as a shark eating a school of fish, we aren’t any different.
Is that an excuse?”.
The talks about nature and planet and humankind, breakup and reconstruction, melancholy,
self destruction and landscapes hit harder because each day I would get off the ship into a different
area in Greenland, each night I would read more of the book, and off I would go again to
explore this great island, and hear about how Americans left mines in isolated areas used for
army exercises that local communities can’t touch, and how the permafrost is sinking and animals
and vegetation are struggling, and as the main character broke down and had an anxiety
attack much similar to the ones I’ve come accostumed too, I too began to weep in front of the
great Raindeer Glacier in Kangerlussuaq. It was a combination of where i was, and where Billy
was, in the Grand Canyon, half lost, half approaching enlightenment, even if only temporarily.
I still believe that Noah and I could probably enjoy a lot of good conversations due to similar
interests and “common places” of things I have found in his writing. I do not know when this
will happen but in the meantime I am content traveling with his characters. If I add anything else
to this review I might spoil the book for you, so please just get your hands on a copy and let me
know what moved you. And if you get a chance visit the places that bring you back alive. Be it
Greenland or the Grand Canyon or other locations that don’t start with a G, do it now, while we’re
still here, they’re still there, and feeling things is still allowed.
(and please leave the places as undisturbed as when you found them).
ISSUE # 21 - TRANSITIONS 45